Let’s get a virtual show of hands…how many of you have mastered the art of manually gathering a student’s home address? It works fine, right? That is, until you have students that don’t have that particular address type. How about calculating a person’s age? That...
Technical
Best Practices for Using Extract Reports
Anyone involved with institutional reporting will tell you that when it comes to the end results, one report definitely does not fit all. Submitting reports to third parties—be they government agencies, financial institutions, or higher ed clearinghouses—can be...
6 Common Misconceptions About Data Management in Higher Education
Managing your institutional data effectively is no mean feat. Dozens of factors come into play, from your choice of reporting tools to the makeup of your institution’s strategic plan. With all those moving parts, it’s little wonder that mastering your data management...
The Anatomy of a DataBlock
When talking about institutional reporting, it’s easy to get lost in a discussion of the data itself. What information should a given report include? How do these two metrics correlate (or not) with one another? Which definition of ‘FTE Student’ are we using? While...
Four Reasons You Should Take Naming Conventions More Seriously
So…let’s say you’ve developed a really cool, really complicated DataBlock. It has 5 forms, 15 multi-column list boxes, 20+ parameters and a dozen SQL variables. A month after it goes live, a director comes up to you and says, “This would be even more useful if the...